Erling Haaland 2026: Norway's World Cup run, the records, and what comes next

For most of Erling Haaland's career the same line followed him around: the most complete goalscorer of his generation, and no World Cup to show for it. Norway had not qualified since 1998, two years before he was born. That ended in the autumn of 2025, when Solbakken's side won all eight of their qualifying matches for a perfect twenty-four points, and Haaland scored sixteen goals along the way — more than anyone in European qualifying. The night it was confirmed, a 4-1 win at a soaking San Siro, he scored twice inside sixty seconds in the seventy-eighth and seventy-ninth minutes to bury Italy.

He arrived in North America at twenty-six, playing his first major international tournament, and the tone was set immediately. Norway opened against Iraq in Boston and Haaland scored twice in the first half of a comfortable win. Drawn in a group alongside France and Senegal, the Norwegians finished runners-up and went through to a knockout phase they had reached only once before in their history.

The round of thirty-two, against Côte d'Ivoire in Dallas, gave them something they had never had. Antonio Nusa opened the scoring with a curling first-half strike, Amad Diallo levelled, and with four minutes left Patrick Berg carried the ball into the box, drew three defenders and rolled it across for Haaland to tap in. It was his fifth goal in three matches at the tournament, and Norway's first knockout win in World Cup history.

Then came the match that will be replayed in Norway for decades. At the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey they knocked out Brazil, five-time world champions, twenty-eight years after the famous 1998 result that a generation of Norwegian fans had been living off. A country that had not been to a World Cup since the last century was suddenly in the quarter-finals.

It ended in Miami on 11 July against England. Norway lost 2-1 after extra time, both goals coming from Jude Bellingham, and the game turned on a moment that is still argued about: Torbjørn Heggem headed in from a corner to put Norway ahead in the second half, only for the goal to be ruled out on review because Haaland had pushed Elliot Anderson — a player who would soon be his club team-mate. Haaland's run of fourteen consecutive international matches with a goal ended that night. He finished the tournament with seven, and Norway matched the deepest run in their history, equalling the quarter-finals of 1938 and 1998.

The club record behind all of this is almost absurd. Since joining Manchester City in 2022 he has passed one hundred and ten Premier League goals in around one hundred and thirty appearances across four seasons, climbing to fourth on City's all-time scorers list, with close to thirty assists alongside them. He holds the Premier League single-season record with thirty-six goals in 2022/23 — beating a mark of thirty-four that Alan Shearer and Andy Cole had set across forty-two-game seasons, and doing it in thirty-one matches. He became the fastest player in the competition's history to a hundred goals. He once scored five in a single Champions League match, in a 7-0 win over RB Leipzig. In the 2025/26 league season he scored twenty-seven in thirty-five games and finished as City's top scorer again.

What comes next is the interesting part. He signed a long contract that should keep him at the Etihad deep into the next decade, which puts the Premier League's all-time scoring record — long assumed untouchable — genuinely within range if he stays fit. Norway, meanwhile, have gone from a footnote to a seeded threat, with Ødegaard behind him and Sørloth beside him. The European season starts again in earnest in August, and you can follow the fixtures as they are scheduled on our live fixtures and odds page.

One honest note to close on. Players like Haaland make football feel predictable — he scores, so back him to score — and that is exactly the instinct bookmakers price into their markets. A striker in this kind of form is never good value in the way it feels like he should be, and his blank against England is the reminder: fourteen matches in a row, and then nothing when it mattered most. If you do bet, compare prices, treat it as entertainment rather than income, and start from operators that have actually been tested — our casino rankings and the fastest-paying casinos are the place to begin. 18+ · play responsibly · BeGambleAware.org.